Bananarama / Ultra Violet / 1995
Every Shade of Blue
wistful, melancholic, yearning
A straightforward mid-90s pop ballad about romantic absence, built around a single colour metaphor for melancholy. The song stays in one emotional place throughout -- longing and loneliness -- rather than developing a story, letting repetition and the chorus hook carry the weight.
longing loneliness waiting emotional dependency night versus day
Who's speaking
A first-person narrator addresses an absent lover directly, using 'you' throughout; the voice is passive and waiting rather than active, giving the impression of someone with little agency over the relationship's rhythm.
What happens
There isn't much plot development -- the song opens with a vague premonition of sadness, settles into describing nights spent missing someone, and ends in the same state of suspended waiting it began in. The daylight and darkness imagery cycles rather than progresses, reinforcing that this is a static emotional loop rather than a story with resolution.
How it's built
Simple verse-chorus pop structure with two short verses, a double run of a 'night goes on' pre-chorus/bridge figure, and a recurring chorus that is repeated three times by the end. The lack of a bridge that shifts perspective or tone means the song relies on accumulation and repetition rather than contrast to build intensity.
Section by section
Opening verse
The song begins with vague dread rather than a specific event -- an unnamed sadness and an expectation of silence from the other person sets a passive, resigned tone from the first line.
Pre-chorus
“I can't escape the way I feel inside”
Natural imagery of moonlight and stars is introduced only to be undercut, establishing that external beauty can't compete with internal feeling -- a conventional but effective contrast.
Chorus
“every shade of blue I see”
The hook turns an abstract emotion into a visual, almost synesthetic image, and the phrase 'shade of blue' allows for a spectrum of sadness rather than a single fixed feeling, giving the simple hook some room to breathe.
Second verse
Dreaming replaces waking reality as the only space where the lover is present, while the return of daylight is treated as an unwelcome intrusion -- flipping the usual day/night symbolism, where night is usually feared and day offers relief.
Bridge/pre-chorus repeat
The image of unending night functions as a stand-in for emotional stasis; the narrator frames endurance itself as the only action available, waiting rather than resolving anything.
Final choruses
Stacking the chorus twice in a row without new lyrical material pushes the song toward incantation rather than development, trusting melody and repetition to deliver catharsis instead of lyrical escalation.
Craft
- extended metaphor
- Blue as both color and sadness is sustained through the chorus, letting a simple pop hook carry double meaning without needing elaboration.
- day/night imagery
- Daylight and darkness are used as emotional markers -- night enables fantasy and dreaming of the absent partner, while day forces a return to reality, structuring the song's emotional swings.
- repetition
- The repeated 'thinking about you' and 'when I'm without you' lines, along with the recurring bridge couplet, mimic the obsessive, circular nature of longing rather than narrative movement.
Reading it
The most direct reading is a conventional absence-and-longing song, using colour and light as emotional shorthand in a way typical of pop balladry. A slightly stronger reading notices that the narrator never addresses the cause of separation or expresses frustration -- only sadness and waiting -- suggesting a passive, perhaps codependent attachment rather than mutual heartbreak. The song doesn't supply enough detail to confirm whether the separation is temporary, chosen, or one-sided, so ambiguity about the relationship's actual state is part of its design, even if likely unintentional.
Context
This is album-era Bananarama after the group had moved into a more straightforward adult pop/dance sound by the mid-90s, following earlier lineup and stylistic shifts. I don't have reliable information about the specific writing or production circumstances of this track, so I'm treating it primarily as a text rather than drawing on behind-the-scenes context.
Listen for
- how the vocal delivery handles the repeated 'thinking about you' line -- whether it builds in intensity or stays flat
- the contrast between the warm chorus melody and the lyric's sad content
- whether the production marks a tonal shift between verse and chorus, since the lyrics themselves don't change register much
- the use of repetition in the final run of choruses as a closing device rather than a lyrical resolution
About Bananarama
Bananarama are an English pop group formed in London in 1980. The group, originally a trio, consisted of friends Sara Dallin, Siobhan Fahey, and Keren Woodward.
1979 - present / United Kingdom
Full biography and catalogue